


that old tune whose lyrics you forgot

by Tiss



Series: It Takes a City [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Communication Issues, Gen, Gladiolus "Concerned Big Brother" Amicitia, M/M, Post-Game(s), Pre-Slash, concrit welcome, i hate writing dialogue, mention of dementia, this fic is just three and a half monologues in a trenchcoat, what is time but perceived change, what's a deadline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:47:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26191423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiss/pseuds/Tiss
Summary: Noctis receives an invitation to a wedding. It’s not exactly what it seems.
Relationships: Eventual Gladiolus Amicitia/Noctis Lucis Caelum, Gladiolus Amicitia & Noctis Lucis Caelum, Prompto Argentum/Ignis Scientia
Series: It Takes a City [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1788979
Comments: 12
Kudos: 38





	that old tune whose lyrics you forgot

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags, people. If you’ve got a **dementia-related trigger** , maybe pass this one by.
> 
> Night, sweetheart, you da best.

“I’ve got your mail,” Gladio announces as he enters Noct’s office. Funny how he’s doing the secretary’s job for him, but the kid reminds Gladio of Talcott, and he doesn’t mind bringing the mail in now and then. The secretary’s swamped without Ignis, anyway. “Huh,” he pauses when he reaches a fancy, decorated envelope, addressed from Prompto and Ignis. Inside is a glossy photo, an old selfie of the two of them, and when he flips the card, he finds a message written in Prompto’s trying-to-be-cursive chickenscratch on the back. “Iggy and Prom are getting married.”

Gladio sets the card and its envelope aside on the desk and continues sorting official enquiries from reports and citizen requests.

Eventually, when Noct continues to give no reaction, he looks up.

Noct is – stunned, probably. He looks significantly more awake than he did a minute ago, anyway.

He’s also staring straight ahead and not moving, which is a bigger tell.

“Since when,” he asks in a faint voice.

Oh. Right. Noct had missed that.

“Uh, about five years back? Six now, I guess. But they’re not big on PDA or telling people,” Gladio tells him.

They’d probably have kept it from Gladio, too, if he hadn’t caught Prompto walking out of Ignis’ room in the early morning once, in Hammerhead. They exchanged a total of four words on the subject over breakfast a couple hours later and then never spoke of it again.

“We going?” he asks Noct.

Noctis holds the photo between his fingers, looks at it, and says nothing for a long time.

…

They go.

…

Cid had turned out to be more tenacious than people had been giving him credit for. A couple weeks’ leave for Ignis to say his goodbyes had turned into a few months when Cid’s condition continued to go back and forth, had turned into Prompto going right back to Hammerhead after his leave had run out because he was buzzing out of his skin with worry. It wasn’t even hard for them to stay there: they had a house and everything, from when they were based there before the Dawn.

It’s been almost half a year, now, but Noct has never once mentioned calling them back to Insomnia. Gladio hasn’t broached the topic either. It didn’t feel like his place.

They seem to be managing without them, anyhow.

Noct’s secretary would beg to differ, but no one’s asking him. The poor guy.

Noct himself is silent on the drive over, but not in a bad way. In fact, he seems more aware than usual, even if the only thing he ever looks at is the passing landscape. Gladio only glances over at him from time to time, wary of his own rusty driving skills, but the difference is definitely there. To his eyes only, maybe, but there.

He’s learned to read Noct again, over this past almost-year. He’s not perfect at it yet, not even at the level he used to be, but it’s still leagues better than what they had when Noctis had just woken up from his post-Dawn coma.

He wouldn’t say that Noctis himself is leagues better, but he is a little. Gladio will take what he can get.

When they arrive, it’s before noon, but just barely. No one meets them at the gas station. Gladio hadn’t expected Ignis or Prompto to be there, given that he and Noct are dropping in ahead of time like the worst kind of guest, but Cindy, at least, he’d thought would have been around somewhere. Instead, the garage seems completely devoid of all life, as does the area around it. Calling out gets him no answer. Noctis watches from the sidelines, silent.

The store by the gas station is locked, so they head over to the diner, hoping to see at least one familiar face.

They see three.

Prompto notices the two of them first and jumps up, jolting the table as he goes. Next to him, Ignis raises his head, and Cindy twists around in her seat and flashes a quick smile at them.

The fatigue behind that smile gives Gladio just a second’s pause, but he lets it go.

They exchange greetings and squeeze Noct into Cindy’s side of the booth, and then Gladio perches next to him on the outside seat. It’s not as difficult as he’d unconsciously expected, but then again, Cindy has always been on the small side, and Gladio himself has yet to regain most the bulk he’d lost during the Long Night. It’ll take a better food supply before that can happen. Would that he could eat his fill more than once a week, but there’s little he can do about that.

Across from them, Prompto sits back down and grins with his usual nervous energy, and Ignis allows a sedate smile of his own.

“Glad to see you two made it, if a day ahead of schedule,” Ignis says.

“Yeah, well,” is all Gladio can offer. The opportunity for an extra day off for Noct had come up, and they’d taken it. He’s aware that he should probably be offering congratulations at this point, but something holds him back. He’s glad for these two, really. He’s just – something is bothering him, but he’ll be damned if he can tell what it is. “Kind of a big thing, you guys getting hitched. Never would’ve expected that.”

Prompto laughs nervously without any sound, eyes focused on something outside the window.

Hmm.

Easy to read as always, that kid.

“Is it really that shocking?” Ignis asks, intonation lilting like it’s a joke, but there’s a subtle _‘Is there a problem’_ , proverbial-teeth-bared challenge being thrown down. Ignis has been like that for most of his adult life, hiding not-quite-threats behind pleasantries like a proper courtier. Gladio’s used to it, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it.

“Well, it’s not like we told a lot of people that we were together in the first place,” Prompto interjects with a worried little smile on his face.

See, Gladio loves his friends, but he’s also a trained bodyguard. He knows suspicious behavior when he sees it.

And Prompto? Is acting way too suspicious even for his own anxiety-tempered standards.

“Why now, though?” Gladio asks. “Something happen that me and Noct don’t know about?”

“Not in particular, no,” Ignis replies, “we simply decided that we might as well. Since neither of us is – going anywhere, as it were.”

Gladio hums his understanding in response and lets the topic go.

For a little while.

He waits until Cindy has excused herself and Ignis has drawn Noct into a recounting of the recent happenings in Insomnia, to say, just quietly enough not to talk over the impromptu city-managing session on the other side of the table, “So hey, Prompto. How’s your camera collection going?”

Prompto blinks at him in silent confusion for a moment.

“I mean, it’s more of a salvage project, but it’s going. Haven’t found anything new in a while, so I’ve been trying to get some of the ones I have to work.”

“Is there one I could borrow?”

Prompto blinks again.

“Uh,” he drawls, and then recovers. “Sure! I’ve got a Gallite pee-en-ess that’s in working order, and I won’t miss it if something happens to it. Well. Much. Oh, wait, sorry, did you actually want something more serious? It’s just, I figured you’d rather have something easier to use, and I’m _pretty_ sure I don’t have a working dee-ess-el-ar that’s not my own.”

Gladio has no idea what a “dee-ess-el-ar” even is.

“Easy to use is fine,” he chokes out.

“So what’d you need it for?” Prompto asks casually. “I mean, uh, you don’t have to tell me! Obviously. Just, are you getting into photography or something?”

“Something kinda like that,” Gladio replies, then gestures with his head at Ignis and Noct, still deep in discussion. “Listen, these two are probably gonna be at it for a while. Mind showing me how to use that Gallite thing while there’s time?”

“Gee, tone down the enthusiasm,” Prompto says with half a wry grin, and then looks over at Ignis with a softer expression. “I guess you’re right, though. Tomorrow will be pretty busy. Hey, Ig?”

“Go ahead,” Ignis responds immediately, only tilting his head a little in Prompto’s direction. Trust Ignis to keep track of all conversations around him. “Noctis should serve as a guide if you take long.”

“We’ll come find you if you guys are still here later,” Prompto promises cheerfully, and with that, they leave.

Hammerhead had never been a large town, or even a mid-sized one, but the Long Night had brought it to its lowest point. Even now, more than half a year after, most of the houses are clearly still unoccupied. Elements damage has accumulated on top of daemon rampage damage, and with no one around to repair it, the buildings are just going to keep getting worse and worse. Most of the former residents are probably dead, too. It looks like the homes are just going to follow suit.

The cottage Ignis and Prompto have occupied since long before the Dawn is just inside one of the smallest rings of fencing put up to keep daemons out. It’s a very short walk from the garage; just a slightly longer one from the diner. They’d gotten lucky with it, Prompto told him when Gladio had first visited: theirs would have been one of the last buildings to get sacrificed to the dark when electricity eventually ran short. Ignis wouldn’t have had to get used to new lodgings every year or so.

They’d only had to give it up for a short while at the very end, or what they can all now say was the end. Thanks to that, and to a local’s helpful hands, it’s in pretty decent condition. For Hammerhead, that translates to windows that are taped together rather than boarded up and to a roof that doesn’t leak during the monsoon season.

Gladio learns all this in the span of a minute, because, apparently, Prompto still wordvomits all over the place whenever he thinks the atmosphere is getting awkward.

There’s a break in the rambling, and he says, “Hey, Prompto.”

“Yeah?”

“Spill it.”

Prompto stares at him uncomprehending for a second, but then his face grows that trademark anxious grin of his.

“Um, what’re you talking about, dude?”

“What’s eating you.”

Gladio is a trained bodyguard. When something seems suspicious, he knows better than to ignore it.

“You’re gonna have to be more specific, big guy,” says Prompto, with a self-deprecating little smile, like he knows he’s caught.

Very suddenly, Gladio doesn’t want to be specific. He doesn’t want to be the asshole who’s throwing around accusations the day before a wedding, even though he was the one who started the whole thing. What if he’s wrong? What if he’s just grown paranoid with age? He wouldn’t put it past himself.

“Look,” he says, “if something’s bothering you about the marriage thing, you gotta speak up. If you’re just getting cold feet, fine, but that’s not the feel I’m getting here. So. If I need to break Ignis’ nose, I gotta now why first.”

“No!” Prompto exclaims, startled, and then laughs, quick and nervous. “Please don’t break his nose. Uh… Alright. Um. There’s no reason for you to break his nose. Honest.”

Gladio folds his arms across his chest and waits.

“Um.” For three, five, fifteen seconds, Prompto looks everywhere but at Gladio. “I guess I just… Do you really not mind listening to me about this? Cos’ I can’t make it short, cos’ I kinda don’t – know, myself.”

Does he? Mind?

“I told you. Spill it.”

This isn’t about minding or not.

Prompto spills his freakin’ guts.

He manages not to overshare, despite all that. If Gladio thought back and went through his memories, he’d probably realize that Prompto never overshares. He’s always in control of himself, always making sure not to show too much, despite giving the impression of an empty-headed ditz. Gladio _does_ realize this, on some level. The lasting relationship between Prompto and Ignis makes all the more sense for it.

Both of them are entirely too good at putting up façades.

Cindy was the one who got the ball rolling, it turns out. Apparently, she’d said something or other to Ignis one night, and then Ignis had come home and started talking about marriage like it was just one of those things you discuss over dinner. Prompto had taken it in as much stride as he could have, considering the suggestion had come out of absolutely nowhere.

“It was just kinda sudden, you know?” Prompto says, hands unlocking the door with no apparent input from his brain. “We don’t – talk about that sort of stuff. Future. That. And I mean, what sort of future would we have been talking about, right? No one liked to think about the future before. People are still kinda – you know.

“So we‘d never talked about it before then. And then he brings it up, and I just…”

The keys go on the side table by the entrance; the shoes, to the neat line-up by the wall on the left. Gladio takes his shoes off, too. He’s been here a couple times, and the place doesn’t seem to have changed at all. He’d guess it’s for Ignis’ benefit.

“I just don’t see why we need to? I mean, it wouldn’t even change anything, so why the pomp and circumstance, y’know?”

Prompto plops onto the couch, and when Gladio takes the armchair off to the side, he can finally properly see Prompto’s face and the mix of conflict and misery on it.

“Iggy’s pretty big on pomp and circumstance.”

The expression Prompto’s wearing changes to something less miserable and more wry.

“That’s the thing, though. He really isn’t. People think he is, because of his manners and all, but he doesn’t care about that stuff anywhere near that much. And…

“Something’s just fishy about it,” Prompto announces with determination. “Gladio, I don’t think Ignis really wants to do this wedding thing. I know you thought I was getting cold feet or whatever, but I’m just… I’m worried, okay? ‘Cause I don’t want him to regret it later. And ‘cause if someone or something is pressuring him, then that’s not okay. I don’t know what to do.”

“Talk to him?” Gladio offers, for lack of any better advice.

“It’s _Ignis_ ,” Prompto stresses, incredulous. “He’s not going to give me any answer that means anything, he’s too careful, and I don’t usually mind that, but this is too serious.”

“Well, talk to him anyway,” says Gladio, out of ideas. He’s no relationship expert. “Communication is key and all that.”

Prompto sighs.

“Yeah, I – I guess there’s no getting around it.” His face contorts into a grimace. “I _so_ don’t want to screw things up between us the day before, though. I mean, yeah, it’s hardly an event at all, it’s just a few of our friends getting together, if any of them can even make it, but – yeah.”

“Hey,” Gladio says, “Noct and I made it. That’s better than none already.”

“Yeah.” Prompto smiles, warm and softly grateful. “Thanks.”

…

When Ignis and Noct haven’t come back after an hour of Gladio messing around with a simple point-and-shoot camera and Prompto giving him pointers, they give up on waiting and head back to the diner.

Humor bubbles up inside Gladio when he sees that Ignis and Noct are, in fact, still at it, and that Noct is making his lets-have-a-break-already face. Ignis, for obvious reasons, can’t tell. When Gladio comes inside, Noct shoots him a look that, even with his currently limited range of expressions, clearly reads, _Get me out of here for the sake of all that’s holy_.

It takes the combined efforts of Gladio and Prompto to shake Ignis off of the topic of resource management, and Noct subtly puts Gladio between Ignis and himself when they walk out of the diner. Gladio swallows a snort and lets him get away with it.

“Ah, Prince! Ah’ mean – Majesty.”

The call comes before they can take more than a couple steps, and then Gladio notices Cindy jogging over from the direction of the garage. She slows to a stop once near, and even though she’s smiling, something about that smile feels just a bit off to him, just like earlier today.

What is it with this town and people piquing his suspicions all day long?

“Good thing I caught you,” Cindy says. “Do you mind hanging back a few more minutes? I got something I wanted to talk to you about.” When Noct doesn’t react for a few seconds too long, she adds, imploring and insistent in equal measures, “It’s pretty important.”

And that is how Noct, with Gladio following, ends up right where he was but a minute ago, with Cindy across the booth from him.

Ignis and Prompto have gone ahead and headed off, so it’s just the three of them, sitting awkwardly in the white noise of the diner appliances.

“Want me to give you guys some privacy?” Gladio asks.

“It’s fine,” Cindy waves the offer away. “Might even be better if you both heard me out.”

The person behind the counter yells out, asking Cindy if she wants anything; she waves that away as well.

“How’re things over in Insomnia? Stable?” she asks.

When it becomes obvious that Noct’s not going to speak, Gladio replies, “More or less. Food production’s low but steady. Been busy reconstructing the Citadel, so the rest of the city is on the back burner for now. We’re getting by.”

“That’s good. Real good,” Cindy nods. “Say, Y’Majesty. Ignis technically still works for you, right?”

“Of course he does,” says Noct quietly.

“That’s a relief,” she smiles.

Gladio takes in the muted discomfort lining that smile, the covered-up bags under her eyes, the limp curls tied away from her face. She looks older than her mid-thirties. He didn’t hang around Cindy much during the Long Night, but he has his instincts, and they’ve yet to lead him wrong today.

“That’s a pretty specific question,” he says.

The smile slowly fades from Cindy’s face, and she looks away.

“Those boys got no one but each other out here,” she says. “I figure you two are the closest thing to family they have left.”

Huh.

“I thought they got on pretty well with the people here.”

Cindy smiles again, but it’s a small and sardonic thing.

“How many people have you seen around?” she asks. “Everyone’s been movin’ over to Galdin and Duscae. There’s no arable land here, no mines or woods or nothin’. Hammerhead was a real small town even before everythin’.” Seemingly without even noticing, she grabs the only napkin on the table and begins to tear it apart. “Won’t be long before it’s all ghost.”

The worst part is, Gladio understands what she’s talking about.

This diner itself, with its one napkin per table and the bar stools lined up at the counter to moonlight as a bar after hours and the cook away most of the time because there’s no one to serve, is only part of it.

“They shouldn’t be sticking around is all I’m sayin’,” Cindy continues. “They’re still young, they got no ties to this place. They should go while the going’s good. Prompto, ‘specially.” She sighs. “That kid needs to be around other people, live a life. Not – waste away out here, helpin’ fix cars old enough to fall apart with a kick.

“That boy ain’t no mechanic. He’ll tell you what each part does and where it goes, sure, but when it comes to putting that to practice?” Cindy shakes her head. “He’s got an artist’s hands. Didn’t mean much before the sun came back, but now…”

A silence comes over the table. Cindy seems to have sunk deep into thought, gaze locked on nothing beyond the window, and Gladio himself can’t think of anything to say after what he’s just heard. He doesn’t know whether he can trust Cindy’s judgment on this, even if she seems pretty convinced. There’s a reliable enough logic in her words, but, well.

It’s up to Prompto, and Ignis, to decide if they want to go back, isn’t it?

“What about you?” Noctis asks unexpectedly.

Cindy looks at him in surprise for a moment, then looks away again.

“Pawpaw won’t leave the garage,” she replies, with a mix of resolve and resignation, “and I ain’t leaving him. He’s – “ she sighs, again.

“He’s the reason Ignis’s gotta leave,” she says, suddenly dire. “It’s…“

The firmness melts off Cindy’s face and she slumps back in the booth, shoulders drawn up. The expression on her face turns tired, worried. Defeated.

“He ain’t good,” she says at last, worrying her cheek between her teeth from the inside. “I was hopin’ it wouldn’t come to that, but… He doesn’t even recognize me half the time. An’ it’s even worse with anyone else.”

Another silence, short but tense.

“It ain’t gonna get any better,” Cindy says as she looks Noctis straight in the eye, adamant like it’s not a king she’s making demands of. “An’ I know Pawpaw wouldn’ta wanted Ignis an’ you folks to see him like that. He’s got his pride to think about an’ all. So - ”

Something cracks in her face.

“ – take ‘em back to the city with you, Y’Majesty,” and the sadness in her tone is a worn, tired thing. “This ain’t something they should see. Ignis least of all.”

Gladio gets it, he does - both the desire to be alone with one’s pain and the shame of showing weakness to those close to you. What he knows, though, is that you can’t keep doing it long-term. It’ll eat you.

He also gets that the pride Cindy was talking about is, in fact, her own.

If this is her choice, then so be it, but he’d hate to see that choice destroy her.

“There’s a place for you in Insomnia, if you ever need it. You and Cid both,” Noct offers. It’s worth very little, that offer, and it’s obvious from his voice that he knows it, but it’s better than nothing.

_It’s better than nothing_ , Gladio tells himself. _It is._

…

“Well?”

“This isn’t easy for me, I’ll have you know,” Ignis grumbles.

Gladio does know, or he can imagine, at least. Ignis is the best of the four of them at hiding his feelings; this is the inevitable side effect. He sips his drink to busy himself while he waits.

This is the third heart-to-heart he’s gotten roped into today. It’s a little ridiculous.

To be fair, he brought this one upon himself. Nobody had asked him to drag Ignis back to the diner that same evening for drinks and confessions under the guise of the lamest bachelor party to grace the surface of Eos. No, he’s – meddling, is probably the best word. Sticking his nose into other people’s relationships.

In his defense, these people are two of his oldest friends.

It’s a shitty defense, he knows, but he can’t just leave this as it is.

Still.

He has a suspicion that Ignis needs to talk to someone, so he might as well take matters into his own hands.

The diner is empty around the two of them, quiet except for the old jukebox crooning out some vaguely familiar song. Gladio finds himself humming along under his breath. They’d just come in and poured their own drinks; that’s how things are done in Hammerhead now. Everyone knows everyone anyway.

The beer still tastes like ass, but Gladio’s used to it.

Ignis, not so much.

Fingers tapping on the glass clasped between his hands, Ignis sits there and doesn’t drink. Gladio doesn’t push him.

“It has to do with – family, I suppose,” Ignis finally says, quiet and thoughtful. “After Insomnia fell, I lost my uncle, and then I lost Noct, and I was…”

He trails off and stays silent for a long time. Gladio nurses his moonshine-beer; Ignis holds his tightly, like an anchor.

The song on the jukebox ends and then begins playing again; ends again, begins.

“I felt like I had I no one left in the world,” Ignis mutters. “I had only known Prompto for a few years, and – you, well,” he huffs a half-laugh without much humor, “we’d never found it very easy to get along.”

He pauses here, and, when Gladio doesn’t react, continues.

“Without my eyesight, it was – even more challenging, to adjust to everything else. You remember how I was.” Intermittently snappish and listless; grabbing onto any task that was available and defaulting to melancholy when idle. It was such a difference from the normally composed Ignis, the memory is still there in Gladio’s mind. “Hardly my proudest moments.”

Hearing it all now, from the bird’s mouth, makes it more real somehow. Less of a distant image, fogged over with Gladio’s own stress.

“I just happened to be in Hammerhead when Cid returned here. And then I just happened to overhear his complaints about the lack of food variety. I…”

Ignis sighs, quiet but long.

“I wanted to be useful to someone. To belong with someone again,” he admits in a strained voice, fingers twitching around his glass. “And Cid was someone I could help. I – let myself get used to it, I suppose. To being needed.”

“Don’t really see what marriage has to do with any of that,” Gladio says plainly, carefully clear of ridicule or scorn.

Ignis only moves his head a little, but Gladio gets the distinct impression of an eyeroll.

“I wanted a sense of belonging, Gladio. A family.” He fidgets subtly with his gloves; on Ignis, it doesn’t even look like fidgeting. “Cindy has recently been – rather determined to keep me out of their family’s business. Cid’s health, not the garage. I cannot begrudge her a desire for privacy, but…

“It is an unwelcome reminder that I do not, as it turns out, have a place here.”

A few seconds of silence, and Ignis raises his glass and takes a sizable swig. He swallows it down with a grimace.

“Regardless. Marriage,” he says, voice somewhat hoarse, “has everything to do with family. It might be a rather heavy-handed method of – of – ” He grunts and takes another swig, quick and decisive, and breathes heavily through his nose while his tastebuds must be dying in agony. “Never mind that. I know I can trust Prompto to make his own decisions concerning himself, and to speak up if mine make him uncomfortable.”

Gladio only hums in reply.

“Kid’s worried about you,” he says eventually. “Talk to him.”

Ignis recoils from the bartop just a bit, as if to ask, _“Me?”_ without actually saying it, and slumps back down. Gladio isn’t sure if that’s a response to the first or the second part of his comment.

“Worrying is what he does best,” Ignis says on a sigh.

The first part, then.

The jukebox chokes, warbles, and then goes abruptly quiet.

In the silence that follows, the soft sounds of Ignis getting off his stool and making his way to the jukebox by touch and memory alone stand out. He gets it working again with a gentle kick to the side and then stands over it, motionless and quiet.

“I may be taking things too far,” he says, subdued. “But I have my own worries, whether I show them or not, and unless the profession of therapist makes an unforeseen resurgence, I suspect I shall be dealing with them in my own ways.”

_Well_ , Gladio thinks, _as long as he’s dealing with them at all._

“Look,” he says. “Do you love him, at least?”

The glare Ignis levels on him is a potent mix of scathing and disappointed, even with the sunglasses. Gladio can tell it from the eyebrows alone. Ignis doesn’t mean it, or not entirely, at least, but he’s always been good at this one expression.

“I had never taken you for a fool, Gladiolus, but my opinion might still change.”

Gladio chuckles and waves him off before he remembers that Ignis can’t see it.

With a huff on the edge of a snort, Ignis returns to his seat and grasps his glass again. The atmosphere feels lighter, clearer.

The silence stretches, and the jukebox plays. Gladio’s fine not saying anything else tonight. His advice resources are all exhausted, anyway.

He glances over at Ignis and spots the redness spreading on his face.

_Heh. Lightweight,_ he thinks to himself. It’s a warm, nostalgic thought.

“When I had nothing and no one,” says Ignis quietly, “he saw that. And he stayed. If nothing else, I would like him to remain by my side. Post-apocalyptic parody of a marriage or not.”

Gladio blinks.

“What d’you mean, ‘parody’?”

“Hm? Well, I suppose you had no reason to know,” Ignis smirks wryly. “Lestallum disbanded the office in charge of marriage registries a good seven years ago. Any marriage now is in word only.”

…

In Ignis and Prompto’s living room, once everything is said and done, Noctis asks Ignis to come back.

Ignis, ever the dutiful servant of the Crown, inclines his head and says, “Of course.”

“Prom? You?”

“I just go where Ignis goes,” Prompto answers with a sheepish smile, hand going to the back of his head.

Ignis smiles as well, subdued, but somehow content.

It feels cruel in some distant way. Ignis _cares_ , he’s said as much, and the years he’d spent cooking meals for Cid and keeping him company and doing his chores couldn’t have passed without a trace, but this is Ignis’ choice. It could only ever be his choice.

Cindy’s hopeless tone echoes in Gladio’s head.

If he’s honest with himself, he’s perversely relieved.

He cares, too.

Gladio surprises himself these days.

…

Another day, and at the end of it he and Noct are waiting for the other two to say their goodbyes. It took them a stupid amount of time – this whole day – to pack everything up for good and fit it into the truck. The amount of stuff makes Gladio wonder what they even had in their room at the Citadel, and how they’d managed to accumulate so much in a time when it was hard to come by pretty much anything. A good portion of it is blind people stuff, like Ignis’ custom spice rack with touch-traceable markings.

Gladio wonders why it got left behind. Whether they were going to come back for it, or come back _to_ it.

He’d talked about the future with Ignis yesterday, a little bit, about whether he should consider Ignis and Prom a family unit now and so on; asked, half-joking, if they were thinking about kids, just to make Ignis snap at him in that composed Ignis way. For all the nostalgia, it left a funny taste in Gladio’s mouth. Like eating cotton candy when you’re way too old for it, and realizing it’s disgustingly sweet.

Well, it’s what he gets for trying to pretend everything’s the same as it was ten years ago.

Noctis, leaning on their car next to him, is a study in dichotomy: his bearded, mature face, over the teenage slouch and folded arms, both launch Gladio into the past and keep him grounded in the present. The setting sun limns Noct in orange-gold.

He’s beautiful, in that light, and Gladio’s thought process stumbles.

He puts a definitive stop to that line of observations.

“Are they going to leave again?” Noct asks, even and quiet and looking out at the desert, like it’s a question as dull as, _“What’s for dinner.”_ Maybe he’s talking to himself. Maybe he just doesn’t want an answer.

“Why would they?” Gladio counters. “Wouldn’t be taking all that stuff with them if they were gonna bolt. Besides, I’ve talked to Ignis. He’s got no plans except Citadel work. Maybe a café, if he ever has to retire, but you’ll have to make him.”

Noct hums in contemplation.

Almost a full year within arm’s reach, and Noct is still as much of an enigma as when he just got back.

“What about you, then?” Gladio asks.

“What about me?” Noctis fire back, still even.

“Plans. Future. Aside from Insomnia.”

Gladio doesn’t know why this bothers him so much, why he has to ask. Noctis is silent for a long while, and Gladio thinks about marriage. About political arrangements, and duty, and choice, and lack thereof.

“The fact that I’m alive…” Noctis says at last, “I think I owe it to Luna. I didn’t expect it, or ask for it. I think I _was_ dead for a little while there. But. I don’t know what I want for myself. Insomnia is my home. And I know how to be a king. It’s my responsibility, but it’s also something I want to do, and something I _can_ do.

“But I don’t think…” Noctis pauses, like he’s thinking over his words, and when he finally looks at Gladio, his eyes are serious, “I don’t think there’s a future in monarchy. The Lucis Caelum line was a tool for the Astrals for the longest time, but there’s no more Astrals, and no more plan. No purpose. It was supposed to end with me. And I think it still should.”

After that, he faces the desert again, and it seems like he’s done.

This is the most Gladio has heard Noctis share in one go within the last year.

“What about you?” Noctis asks suddenly, looking at him from the corner of his eye.

_Why would you ask me so casually, after baring your soul like that?_ Gladio thinks. _It’s been a year, and there are still parts of you that I can’t figure out._

“I go where you go,” he says, looking straight at Noct, hiding nothing.

Noctis huffs through his nose with half a smile and leans heavier on the car.

“What a pair we make,” he says.

It’s a declaration, that phrase from Noctis’ lips. A pair. An _us_ , separate from _everyone else_.

In this moment, with the acerbic smell of a gas station everywhere and the car warm behind them and Noctis’ features thrown into a contrast by the setting desert sun, it’s like the past ten-and-something years never happened. Like just last week they were sparring at the Citadel, and Gladio had chastised his prince for exhausting his magic reserves mid-warp, and Noct had given him that peevish look that said he was already aware of that, thanks, and it was so _easy_ , so fucking easy to goad him on and reign him in and get him to shed all of his masks. Noct’s eyes would sharpen with focus and adrenaline, and he would watch Gladio’s every move like a hawk, and it would make excitement thrum in him like a struck wire and make him deaf to everything but the here and now, and the entirety of the world would be the space between the two of them.

When Noctis says, _“What a pair we make,”_ for just a second, it’s like that.

The moment snags on something as it passes, and then, all of a sudden, it’s like a veil unravels. The world goes three-dimensional in a way it wasn’t before, and Gladio becomes keenly aware of his own position in space relative to everything around him. It’s the weirdest sensation. Noctis stands out like a solid, black-clad beacon – Gladio’s stubborn prince-king who won’t wear any other color even in the desert heat. There’s some weird gravity about him that keeps dragging Gladio’s gaze back.

A car honks its horn somewhere behind him, and when he turns around, it’s Prompto and Ignis’ truck, peeling mint-green paint and everything. Prompto’s elbow is hanging out of the driver-side window, as is most of Prompto’s grinning head.

Gladio raises a hand in acknowledgement and goes to start the car.

He thinks, unexpected even to himself, about losing and gaining. About how things seem to change around you before you know it, and then suddenly you’re standing in a completely different scene.

This town might fade away in the blink of an eye, but the four of them will still be around. Not here, but somewhere, alive.

The drive to Insomnia will take a while in these clunkers. They’d best get moving.

**Author's Note:**

> So I took my sweet time, I know. Uh. I’m more disappointed in myself than sorry, but lemme just tell you guys I was trying my best, arrite? Real life is a thing, and depression is also a thing, so cut me some slack, ay? Thanks, love you all.
> 
> I promise I’m working on the next parts, kay? They’re all halfway written already, I’m not jumping ship at this point. Just sit tight. Give [nightflower_panda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightflower_panda/pseuds/nightflower_panda) some love in the meantime, she’s a good girl.
> 
> Oh, and apparently I’m posting this on Noct’s birthday. Nice.


End file.
